Physicist

Last updated
Albert Einstein, a key theoretical physicist in the 20th century who developed the theory of relativity and parts of early quantum theory Albert Einstein 1947.jpg
Albert Einstein, a key theoretical physicist in the 20th century who developed the theory of relativity and parts of early quantum theory

A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. [1] [2] Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate causes of phenomena, and usually frame their understanding in mathematical terms. They work across a wide range of research fields, spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic and particle physics, through biological physics, to cosmological length scales encompassing the universe as a whole. The field generally includes two types of physicists: experimental physicists who specialize in the observation of natural phenomena and the development and analysis of experiments, and theoretical physicists who specialize in mathematical modeling of physical systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. [1]

Contents

Physicists can apply their knowledge towards solving practical problems or to developing new technologies (also known as applied physics or engineering physics). [3] [4] [5]

History

In an 18th-century experiment in "natural philosophy" (later to be called "physics") English scientist Francis Hauksbee works with an early electrostatic generator. Hawksbees Electrical Machine by Jean-Antoine Nollet.jpg
In an 18th-century experiment in "natural philosophy" (later to be called "physics") English scientist Francis Hauksbee works with an early electrostatic generator.

The study and practice of physics is based on an intellectual ladder of discoveries and insights from ancient times to the present. Many mathematical and physical ideas used today found their earliest expression in the work of ancient civilizations, such as the Babylonian astronomers and Egyptian engineers, the Greek philosophers of science and mathematicians such as Thales of Miletus, Euclid in Ptolemaic Egypt, Archimedes of Syracuse and Aristarchus of Samos. Roots also emerged in ancient Asian cultures such as India and China, and particularly the Islamic medieval period, which saw the development of scientific methodology emphasising experimentation, such as the work of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) in the 11th century. The modern scientific worldview and the bulk of physics education can be said to flow from the scientific revolution in Europe, starting with the work of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus leading to the physics of Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler in the early 1600s. The work on mechanics, along with a mathematical treatment of physical systems, was further developed by Christiaan Huygens and culminated in Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation by the end of the 17th century. The experimental discoveries of Faraday and the theory of Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism were developmental high points during the 19th century. Many physicists contributed to the development of quantum mechanics in the early-to-mid 20th century. New knowledge in the early 21st century includes a large increase in understanding physical cosmology.

The broad and general study of nature, natural philosophy, was divided into several fields in the 19th century, when the concept of "science" received its modern shape. Specific categories emerged, such as "biology" and "biologist", "physics" and "physicist", "chemistry" and "chemist", among other technical fields and titles. [6] The term physicist was coined by William Whewell (also the originator of the term "scientist") in his 1840 book The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. [7]

Education

A standard undergraduate physics curriculum consists of classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, non-relativistic quantum mechanics, optics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, and laboratory experience. [8] [9] [10] Physics students also need training in mathematics (calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, complex analysis, etc.), and in computer science.

Any physics-oriented career position requires at least an undergraduate degree in physics or applied physics, while career options widen with a master's degree like MSc, MPhil, MPhys or MSci. [11]

For research-oriented careers, students work toward a doctoral degree specializing in a particular field. Fields of specialization include experimental and theoretical astrophysics, atomic physics, biological physics, chemical physics, condensed matter physics, cosmology, geophysics, gravitational physics, material science, medical physics, microelectronics, molecular physics, nuclear physics, optics, particle physics, plasma physics, quantum information science, and radiophysics.

Careers

Experimental physicists at work at the accelerator laboratory of the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland) Fyysikot tyossaan.jpg
Experimental physicists at work at the accelerator laboratory of the University of Jyväskylä (Finland)

The three major employers of career physicists are academic institutions, laboratories, and private industries, with the largest employer being the last. Physicists in academia or government labs tend to have titles such as Assistants, Professors, Sr./Jr. Scientist, or postdocs. As per the American Institute of Physics, some 20% of new physics Ph.D.s holds jobs in engineering development programs, while 14% turn to computer software and about 11% are in business/education. [12] A majority of physicists employed apply their skills and training to interdisciplinary sectors (e.g. finance [13] ). [14]

Job titles for graduate physicists include Agricultural Scientist, Air Traffic Controller, Biophysicist, Computer Programmer, Electrical Engineer, Environmental Analyst, Geophysicist, Medical Physicist, Meteorologist, Oceanographer, Physics Teacher/Professor/Researcher, Research Scientist, Reactor Physicist, Engineering Physicist, Satellite Missions Analyst, Science Writer, Stratigrapher, Software Engineer, Systems Engineer, Microelectronics Engineer, Radar Developer, Technical Consultant, etc. [15] [16] [17] [18]

The majority of Physics terminal bachelor's degree holders are employed in the private sector. Other fields are academia, government and military service, nonprofit entities, labs and teaching. [19]

Typical duties of physicists with master's and doctoral degrees working in their domain involve research, observation and analysis, data preparation, instrumentation, design and development of industrial or medical equipment, computing and software development, etc. [20]

Honors and awards

The highest honor awarded to physicists is the Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded since 1901 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. [21] National physical societies have many prizes and awards for professional recognition. In the case of the American Physical Society, as of 2023, there are 25 separate prizes and 33 separate awards in the field.

Professional certification

United Kingdom

Chartered Physicist (CPhys) is a chartered status and a professional qualification awarded by the Institute of Physics. It is denoted by the postnominals "CPhys".

Achieving chartered status in any profession denotes to the wider community a high level of specialised subject knowledge and professional competence. According to the Institute of Physics, holders of the award of the Chartered Physicist (CPhys) demonstrate the "highest standards of professionalism, up-to-date expertise, quality and safety" along with "the capacity to undertake independent practice and exercise leadership" as well as "commitment to keep pace with advancing knowledge and with the increasing expectations and requirements for which any profession must take responsibility".

Chartered Physicist is considered to be equal in status to Chartered Engineer, which the IoP also awards as a member of the Engineering Council UK, and other chartered statuses in the UK. It is also considered a "regulated profession" under the European professional qualification directives.

Canada

The Canadian Association of Physicists can appoint an official designation called Professional Physicist (P. Phys.), [22] similar to the designation of Professional Engineer (P. Eng.). This designation was unveiled at the CAP congress in 1999 and already more than 200 people carry this distinction.

To get the certification, at minimum proof of honours bachelor or higher degree in physics or a closely related discipline must be provided. Also, the physicist must have completed, or be about to complete, three years of recent physics-related work experience after graduation. And, unless exempted, a professional practice examination must also be passed. An exemption can be granted to a candidate that has practiced physics for at least seven years and provide a detailed description of their professional accomplishments which clearly demonstrate that the exam is not necessary.

Work experience will be considered physics-related if it uses physics directly or significantly uses the modes of thought (such as the approach to problem-solving) developed in your education or experience as a physicist, in all cases regardless of whether the experience is in academia, industry, government, or elsewhere. Management of physics-related work qualifies, and so does appropriate graduate student work.

South Africa

The South African Institute of Physics also delivers a certification of Professional Physicist (Pr.Phys). [23] At a minimum, the owner must possess a three-year bachelors or equivalent degree in physics or a related field and an additional minimum of six years' experience in a physics-related activity; or an Honor or equivalent degree in physics or a related field and an additional minimum of five years' experience in a physics-related activity; or master or equivalent degree in physics or a related field and an additional minimum of three years' experience in a physics-related activity; a Doctorate or equivalent degree in Physics or a related field; or training or experience which, in the opinion of the Council, is equivalent to any of the above.

Professional societies

Physicists may be a member of a physical society of a country or region. Physical societies commonly publish scientific journals, organize physics conferences and award prizes for contributions to the field of physics. Some examples of physical societies are the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics, with the oldest physical society being the German Physical Society.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chemist</span> Scientist trained in the study of chemistry

A chemist is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms. Chemists carefully measure substance proportions, chemical reaction rates, and other chemical properties. In Commonwealth English, pharmacists are often called chemists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Physics</span> Scientific field of study

Physics is the scientific study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines. A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lars Onsager</span> Norwegian-American physical chemist and theoretical physicist (1903-1976)

Lars Onsager was a Norwegian American physical chemist and theoretical physicist. He held the Gibbs Professorship of Theoretical Chemistry at Yale University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1968.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Civil engineer</span> Engineering of infrastructure

A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing infrastructure that may have been neglected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yang Chen-Ning</span> Chinese theoretical physicist (born 1922)

Yang Chen-Ning or Chen-Ning Yang, also known as C. N. Yang or by the English name Frank Yang, is a Chinese theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to statistical mechanics, integrable systems, gauge theory, and both particle physics and condensed matter physics. He and Tsung-Dao Lee received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on parity non-conservation of weak interaction. The two proposed that the conservation of parity, a physical law observed to hold in all other physical processes, is violated in the so-called weak nuclear reactions, those nuclear processes that result in the emission of beta or alpha particles. Yang is also well known for his collaboration with Robert Mills in developing non-abelian gauge theory, widely known as the Yang–Mills theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abdus Salam</span> Pakistani theoretical physicist (1926–1996)

Mohammad Abdus Salam was a Pakistani theoretical physicist. He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg for his contribution to the electroweak unification theory. He was the first Pakistani and the first scientist from an Islamic country to receive a Nobel Prize and the second from an Islamic country to receive any Nobel Prize, after Anwar Sadat of Egypt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Gutzwiller</span> Swiss-American physicist (1925–2014)

Martin Charles Gutzwiller was a Swiss-American physicist, known for his work on field theory, quantum chaos, and complex systems. He spent most of his career at IBM Research, and was also an adjunct professor of physics at Yale University.

The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based not-for-profit learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, research and application.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonard Susskind</span> American theoretical physicist (born 1940)

Leonard Susskind is an American theoretical physicist, Professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His research interests are string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and a distinguished professor of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.

Engineering physics (EP), sometimes engineering science, is the field of study combining pure science disciplines and engineering disciplines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology</span> Russian university

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, is a public research university located in Moscow Oblast, Russia. It prepares specialists in theoretical and applied physics, applied mathematics and related disciplines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women in science</span> Contributions of women to the field of science

The presence of women in science spans the earliest times of the history of science wherein they have made significant contributions. Historians with an interest in gender and science have researched the scientific endeavors and accomplishments of women, the barriers they have faced, and the strategies implemented to have their work peer-reviewed and accepted in major scientific journals and other publications. The historical, critical, and sociological study of these issues has become an academic discipline in its own right.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Centre for Theoretical Physics</span> Research center in Trieste, Italy

The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) is a research center for physical and mathematical sciences, located in Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy.

Abdullah Sadiq, is a Pakistani physicist and ICTP laureate who received the ICTP Prize in the honour of Nikolay Bogolyubov, in the fields of mathematics and solid state physics in 1987 for his contributions to scientific knowledge in the field of mathematics and statistical physics. He is the professor of physics and current dean of the department of physics of the Air University of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giorgio Parisi</span> Italian physicist (born 1948)

Giorgio Parisi is an Italian theoretical physicist, whose research has focused on quantum field theory, statistical mechanics and complex systems. His best known contributions are the QCD evolution equations for parton densities, obtained with Guido Altarelli, known as the Altarelli–Parisi or DGLAP equations, the exact solution of the Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model of spin glasses, the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation describing dynamic scaling of growing interfaces, and the study of whirling flocks of birds. He was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Klaus Hasselmann and Syukuro Manabe for groundbreaking contributions to theory of complex systems, in particular "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">K. R. Sreenivasan</span> Indian-American scientist and physicist

Katepalli Raju Sreenivasan is an aerospace scientist, fluid dynamicist, and applied physicist whose research includes physics and applied mathematics. He studies turbulence, nonlinear and statistical physics, astrophysical fluid mechanics, and cryogenic helium. He was the dean of engineering and executive vice provost for science and technology of New York University. Sreenivasan is also the Eugene Kleiner Professor for Innovation in Mechanical Engineering at New York University Tandon School of Engineering and a professor of physics and mathematics professor at the New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

Chartered Physicist (CPhys) is a chartered status and a professional qualification for physicists awarded by the Institute of Physics. It is denoted by the postnominals "CPhys".

A chartered professional is a person who has gained a specific level of skill or competence in a particular field of work, which has been recognised by the award of a formal credential by a relevant professional organization. Chartered status is considered a mark of professional competency, and is awarded mainly by chartered professional bodies and learned societies. Common in Britain, it is also used in Ireland, the United States and the Commonwealth, and has been adopted by organizations around the world.

Physics outreach encompasses facets of science outreach and physics education, and a variety of activities by schools, research institutes, universities, clubs and institutions such as science museums aimed at broadening the audience for and awareness and understanding of physics. While the general public may sometimes be the focus of such activities, physics outreach often centers on developing and providing resources and making presentations to students, educators in other disciplines, and in some cases researchers within different areas of physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Warren Elliot Henry</span> American physicist (1909–2001)

Warren Elliot Henry was an American physicist, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his work in the fields of magnetism and superconductivity. He made significant contributions to the advancement of science and technology and education, training and mentoring several generations of physicists.

References

  1. 1 2 Rosen, Joe (2009). Encyclopedia of Physics. Infobase Publishing. p. 247.
  2. "physicist". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary . Merriam-Webster. "a scientist who studies or is a specialist in physics"
  3. "Industrial Physicists: Primarily specializing in Physics" (PDF). American Institute for Physics. October 2016.
  4. "Industrial Physicists: Primarily specializing in Engineering" (PDF). American Institute for Physics. October 2016.
  5. "Industrial Physicists: Primarily specializing outside of STEM sectors" (PDF). American Institute for Physics. October 2016.
  6. Cahan, David, ed. (2003). From Natural Philosophy to the Sciences: Writing the History of Nineteenth-Century Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN   0-226-08928-2.
  7. Donald S. L. Cardwell, James Joule: A Biography, Manchester University Press - 1989, page 18
  8. Wachter, Armin; Hoeber, Henning (2006). Compendium of Theoretical Physics. New York, NY: Springer. ISBN   0-387-25799-3.
  9. Krey, Uwe; Owen, Anthony (2007). Basic Theoretical Physics : A concise overview (1st ed.). Berlin: Springer. ISBN   978-3-540-36804-5.
  10. Kompaneyets, Alexander Solomonovich (2012). Theoretical physics (2nd ed.). Mineola, New York: Dover. ISBN   978-0-486-60972-0.
  11. "Physicist". nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk. National Careers Service, United Kingdom. 7 October 2016.
  12. AIP Statistical Research Center. "Industrially Employed Physicists: Primarily in Non-STEM Fields" (PDF). Retrieved August 21, 2006.
  13. "Physicists and the Financial Markets". Financial Times. 18 October 2013. Archived from the original on 2022-12-10.
  14. American Institute for Physics (AIP) Statistical Research Center Report Physics Doctorates Initial Employment published March 2016.
  15. "What can I do with a degree in Physics?" (PDF). Augusta University. 2016. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 2, 2016. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  16. "Physicist Career Opportunities". Illinois Institute of Technology. 2016. Retrieved November 10, 2016.
  17. "Physics Education, Applied to Engineering". National Academy of Engineering (NAE). 2016. Retrieved November 10, 2016.
  18. "Engineering Physicist careers". Simon Fraser University, Canada. 2016. Retrieved February 27, 2017.
  19. "Initial Employment Sectors of Physics Bachelor's, Classes of 2011 & 2012 Combined". American Institute of Physics. 26 August 2013. Retrieved September 13, 2016.
  20. "2111 Physicists and astronomers". National Occupational Classification - Canada. 2016. Archived from the original on November 11, 2016. Retrieved November 11, 2016.
  21. "The Nobel Prize in Physics". Nobelprize.org.
  22. "Professional Certification (PPhys)".
  23. "Register as professional physicist". saip.org.za. Retrieved 20 April 2023.

Further reading